The 38th International Symposium on Combustion was held from January 24 to 29, 2021. Xiaoyuan Zhang, a PhD student in grade 2016 from School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, won the Bernard Lewis Fellowship awarded by the Combustion Institute. Among all the six winners, Xiaoyuan Zhang is the only one from a Chinese institute.

Xiaoyuan Zhang focused on combustion reaction kinetics studies during her Ph.D. supervised by Prof. Yuyang Li. After graduation, she joined the Clean Combustion Research Center of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia for post-doctoral research. During the Ph.D. period, she developed a core reaction mechanism that is suitable for a wide range of engine combustion conditions based on synchrotron vacuum ultraviolet photoionization mass spectrometry and other advanced combustion diagnostic methods and theoretical calculation methods. The strategy of using oxygenated fuels to generate methyl and ethyl radicals were innovatively proposed, which can extend combustion conditions of previous validation data to low- and intermediate-temperature region. This mechanism is superior to classic mechanisms in the prediction of low-temperature oxidation reactivity, high-pressure flame propagation and pollutant formation for C1-C2 fuels. This work was highly commented by international renowned scholars.

Dr. Xiaoyuan Zhang has 9 first-author and 2 co-first author publications on Combustion and Flame and Proceedings of Combustion Institute, which are two top journals in combustion community. She also won the SJTU Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award and SJTU Outstanding Graduate Award in 2019.

The Bernard Lewis Fellowship is named after Prof. Bernard Lewis, who is one of the most famous combustion scientists in history and founder of the Combustion Institute. It is assessed biennially and rewards young scholars obtained a PhD degree within three years who have contributed high-level research and have outstanding academic potential.